It is sad that some of the big accounts choose to just help themselves when they could do so much good for the Steem platform in general. If smaller accounts are not getting rewards for good content then they will leave and that harms the Steem price so we all lose. With the change in rewards there is more benefit from good curation.
The risk of retaliation will put many off downvoting, but there are plenty of smaller accounts that misuse (better term than abuse?) the platform. I tend to go after those and leave the bigger ones to the whales and orcas. I have been downvoted by Mr H before, but the community helped me out.
Downvoting is not violence or stealing. It is a form of curation as valid as upvoting to balance out the rewards which are supposed to be given by the community, not bots. Big self-votes are also selfish.
It is good to see initiatives like @curangel making things better.